Anyone that stumbles on the quaint coastal town of Shelter Bay might call it sleepy. They may even mistake it for a place where nothing much happens.
Perhaps that's because it's a tight-knit community full of happy families and local businesses go...
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With just the bloodied clothes on my back and the ring of gunshots in my ears, I drove through the night. I needed to put as much distance between me and the past as possible. To escape the consequences of what I'd done.
I rolled down every window in the car to let the frigid, pine-soaked air sting my eyes and bite my skin. Until I couldn't tell if I was shaking from the adrenaline screaming through my veins, or if I was close to hypothermia. Until the howling wind turned my gunpowder-singed hair into icicles.
My blonde hair would have to go, of course. Same for the luxury I was driving. Both attracted too much attention.
The cash in my wallet and a tube of Chapstick was all I kept from my purse, the rest I tossed out of the window into the brush lining the empty highway (including the bag, itself).
So, what if the cops found them? It didn't matter if I was presumed dead. In fact, that would give me the head start I needed.
For years I'd dreamed of disappearing. Of escaping the gilded cage inside my private hell.
I had no concrete plans for how I would do it, or when, but those little fantasies kept me going. They were the glimmer of hope I clung to when I was in danger of drowning.
In the end, it didn't matter. In the end, my choices came down to fight, or die. And since I had less than a few seconds to decide, I fought like hell.
Someone must have heard my screams (or the gunshots), but the closest neighbor was acres away from our secluded cabin in the woods. It would be almost impossible to tell where all the commotion came from. Looking back, I'm sure it's why he chose that location.
Despite the deafening keen filling my head, I remembered the hollow pops of the revolver ricocheting off the mountains and echoing over the lake.
One! Two! Three! Like the crack of a deadly whip on my eardrum.
The kickback smarted so bad I almost dropped my only protection, so I ran.
I grabbed the keys and sprinted for the Mercedes.
My bones ached and my skin crawled. My tattered nails were crammed with grit and dried blood. My arms and hands were covered in the evidence of a hard-fought struggle.
The exigent throb behind my swollen eyes made it difficult to see (or even blink), but I still bawled hysterically.
A confusing mixture of grief and panic and jubilation and relief poured down my filthy cheeks, freezing tiny tracks in the glacial wind belting my face.
The car's high beams illuminated a narrow slice of the road ahead.
I wasn't in the clear, but I was free.
I had no clue where I was going, but that didn't matter.
There would be hell to pay if anyone found me, that's why I kept the gun.
